Hello, unsure if one could get a objective answer on this one, but I ask out of curiosity since I find the potrayal of japan and nazi germany technology in “the man in the high castle” odd, especially since japan had 20 years to catch up with nazi germany so I’m not sure it make sence, even within the show universe, for japan to be a lot less modern than nazi germany.
Thanks for your answers!
Edited the title, I missed up here.
In terms of technology Germany was leaps and bounds ahead of Japan in almost every way possible.
Some of the reasons are obvious mainly the three branches of the Japanese military did not cooperate with each other and did not share innovations outside of their respective branch and even then there was tons of bickering inside each branch over position, favouritism and political power. Add to that Japan was on a massive anti-colonial kick as they were trying to go back to the ways of feudalism and away from European influences.
While some areas of Japanese manufacturing and technology was on par with European tech and manufacturing the Japanese were very slow to capitalize on those tech and manufacturing leads.
Not to say the Japanese weren’t leaders in modern warfare many of the Japanese warplanes were for the time advanced and faster than every other aircraft they faced and the Japanese Navy was very powerful with the worlds largest fleet of Aircraft carriers at the time.
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It was probably not so much a question of technological advances as industrial capacity. Japan had the knowledge, but lacked the industrial capacity to utilise it. Just as the Wehrmacht was primarily a horse and railroad army, not because Germany lacked the technology for motorisation but because it lacked the industrial capacity. Japan was producing equipment as good as anyone else, it lacked the ability to produce them at the scale needed. Another symptom of this was keeping older equipment in production longer because they could not afford to interrupt supply during changeover; just as the UK kept the 2ldr ATG in production longer than the technology merited.